AD ASTRA

KANSAS

FOUNDATION

Fall 2020 Volume 19, Issue 3

Image credit: NASA

Saturday, Oct 24 at the

Cosmosphere in Hutchinson

1-2:30 p.m.

This will be a hybrid

event with in-person

and virtual

presentations.

Social distancing and

masks required for

in-person attendees.

Seating limited.

Registration needed.

REGISTER

OR

Watch LIVE on our

Ad Astra Kansas

Foundation FACE-

BOOK page.

What an exciting time it is for space science, with NASA’s Artemis

Program scheduling a return to the Moon by 2024 and with Mars being

on our bucket list for the 2030s.

It’s a lot for curious space fans to absorb, not to mention teachers with

inquisitive students. So, we thought an overview of the Artemis mission,

its steps, preparations and other facets would be of

interest to many.

Speaking about Artemis will be Michael Staab, WSU

and Cosmosphere alum, who is the current Fault Man-

agement Systems Principal Engineer for NASA’s Lunar

Lander and Lunar Gateway Programs at Northrup

Grumman. Previously he worked at NASA JPL.

Martin Ratcliffe, WSU Cohen Honors professor of

astronomy will give more insight into Earth’s only

natural satellite. Ratcliffe has been a science writer in

astronomy and cosmology for over 35 years and a

monthly contributor to Astronomy Magazine since 1996.

Having worked for three years with Mars rover data,

K-State grad student Sarah Lamm will look at

Perseverance and the other rovers. She was a team

member on the Curiosity Rover for three years and

worked for Los Alamos National Laboratory for

three summers.

Steve Durst of the Ad Astra Kansas Foundation

will introduce us to a new science initiative in our

state. Durst, whose Space Age Publishing Company

has offices in Hawai’i and California, has focused on

space news and exploration for over 40 years.

Invited is physicist Dr. Gerald Jackson. If able to

attend, he will present about a NASA-funded study of

a robotic mission to Alpha Centauri and exo-planet

Proxima b.

$2.8 million grant

allows WSU to

keep leading

NASA-in-Kansas

efforts

2

KU astronomer

helps discover first

planet orbiting

white dwarf star

2

Imaging Triton--

the optics are

good for Winfield

native

3

More help for

STEM education!

3

Interstellar R & D 4

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

This is our

12th annual

Galaxy Forum

Flyer Speakers Teachers

Orion is the

exploration vehicle

built to carry crews

to the Moon.

(SLI) competition in Huntsville,

Alabama, where they placed in the

top 10 nationally. An increase in

funding with this latest award will

allow sponsorship of more projects

in Kansas.

Linda Harl, JSP participant, has

been running Dr. Miller’s Aero-space Projects and Prototyping Lab.

She will work with Dr. Atri Dutta,

associate professor of aerospace

engineering, doing interplanetary

mission analysis and examining

launch trajectories for spacecraft

that travel between planets.

WSU is also the lead for the

Kansas NASA Established Program

to Stimulate Competitive Research

(EPSCoR) Program, which awards

research grants in support of

NASA’s strategic objectives.

EPSCoR grants encourage partner-

ships with industry.

More information about NASA in

Kansas Space Grant and EPSCoR

programs is found

at www.nasainkansas.org.

$2.8 million grant allows WSU to continue

to lead NASA in Kansas efforts

Page 2 Fall 2020

NASA in Kansas has existed since

1991, with WSU as the lead since

2007. Other members are Emporia

State, Fort Hays State, Haskell

Indian Nations, Kansas State and

Pittsburg State Universities, and the

University of Kansas, Kansas Cos-

mosphere and Exploration Place.

“Together we favorably impact lots

of students, faculty, NASA and the

state of Kansas,” said Dr. Scott

Miller, director of the program

and chair of WSU’s aerospace

engineering department.

NASA serves as a catalyst to lead in

STEM-based education, research,

industry and policy in Kansas.

WICHITA--For the fourth

time, the Wichita State College of

Engineering’s NASA in Kansas

program has secured a multi-year,

multi-million-dollar grant. NASA in

Kansas is a consortium of universi-

ties and science museums that

conduct research and outreach in

support of NASA. The latest four-

year award is for $2.8 million.

Under this mission NASA

sponsors internships at NASA

centers, fellowships for students,

and workshops for teachers.

In the past two years, three WSU

students interned at NASA. Lucas

Webb and Kelly Shelts worked on

rotocraft design at Ames Research

Center, and Brianna Wallace

worked at Marshall Space Flight

Center creating virtual reality

environments to test human

factors in space flight.

Also, NASA sponsors directorate

projects focused on missions. At

WSU, this includes the Jump Start

Program (JSP) and Experiential

Aerospace Fellowship (EAF), programs that employ WSU engi-

neering students in aeronautics-

related research and outreach

efforts.

In the past year, JSP and EAF stu-

dents have worked on NASA-

relevant research on a variety of

topics. Also, WSU sent a team to

NASA’s Student Launch Initiative

Linda Harl, WSU

aerospace engineering

junior, manages the

Aerospace Projects

and Prototyping Lab,

paid by the NASA in

Kansas Jump Start

Program. Photo: WSU

Strategic Communications

LAWRENCE — A KU astrono-

mer played a key role on the team

announcing the first-ever discov-

ery of a planet orbiting a white

dwarf star. The finding shows the

likely presence of a Jupiter-sized

planet, named WD 1856 b,

orbiting the smaller star remnant

every 34 hours.

“This planet is roughly the size of

Jupiter, [with] a very short orbital

period — a year is only 1.4 days,

so it’s quickly whipping around its

white dwarf star,” said Ian Cross-

field, KU assistant professor of

physics and astronomy, a co-author on the paper.

A white dwarf is the vestige of a

star, like our sun, that has

ballooned into a red giant then

collapsed back into a dense, dim

core often about the size of

Earth; so this planet is much larger

than what’s left of its star. The

process usually devours orbiting

planets, so its presence is

surprising.

At first, WD 1856 b captured

astronomers’ interest when they

noticed a possible transiting object

with NASA’s TESS Space Tele-

scope survey. TESS finds a planet

by looking at a star, and measures

its brightness continuously for

weeks. If a planet is orbiting the

star and passes between the view-

er and the star, some of that star-

light will be blocked. Then the star

will brighten again after the planet passes — this is called the ‘transit’

of the planet. TESS looks for

transiting exoplanet satellites. “It

tells you that something is there

— but it doesn’t necessarily tell

you what it is—a planet or an-

other dim star,” said Crossfield.

To help the international team of

scientists confirm if WD 1856 b

was a planet, he studied the ob-

ject’s infrared emissions with

NASA’s now-defunct Spitzer

Space Telescope before the

satellite’s decommission.

“This new object could have

been a small star or a big planet.

The way we could tell the differ-

ence was to look and see — is

this thing emitting infrared light as well? If it’s a star, stars are

usually hotter than planets and it

should be glowing in the infrared.

KU astronomer helps with first discovery

of planet orbiting white dwarf star

KU asst. professor

of physics Ian

Crossfield helped

find a planetary

anomaly. An

article on this was

published in the

September 17

edition of Nature.

Photo courtesy KU news

STAR cont. pg.3

Page 3 Fall 2020

Imaging Triton—Optics are good for Winfield native

Winfield native Penny Warren

became interested in science at age

eight. “We learned about the water

cycle. It fascinated me. I knew then

I was going to be a scientist.”

In high school, she was good at

math and loved “knowing the un-

derlying drivers of things. Physics

seemed like the most basic science,

so it seemed like a good spot,”

she said.

With degrees in physics from

Kansas State in 1987 and Purdue

n 1996, her first work was at the

Optical Science Division of the Na-

val Research Lab in Washington,

D.C., researching improvements in

cameras that photograph in infrared

and visible wave bands.

Since 2002 she has worked for Ball

Aerospace in Boulder, Colo., as a

manager in their Detector Engi-

neering Area. This is in support of

a project proposal for NASA’s

Discovery Mission’s 2025 TRIDENT

spacecraft mission.

The goal is to design a camera for a

flyby of Neptune’s moon Triton.

Detector engineering is the tech-

nical development of materials,

electronics, and optics to build

cameras and other products at

many wavelengths of light.

The cameras used for NASA

missions are quieter and make

much clearer images than our cell

phones. All aspects of the camera,

from the materials used to the tem-

perature it operates at, affect the

precision of the cameras.

The payloads Ball proposes to build

for the Triton mission are an infra-

red spectrometer and a narrow

field-of-view visible band camera.

According to Warren, the space-

craft and instruments must be radi-

ation tolerant because of Neptune

and Triton’s high radiation fields.

Instruments need to operate at very

low temperatures—the infrared

spectrometer at 40K (-387

degrees F) and the visible camera at

168K (-157 degrees F), so that the

thermal noise in the cameras is very

low and the images are as crisp as

possible.

“[I] loved

knowing the

underlying

drivers of

things…”

Among the parameters guiding the

design are structural issues since

the cameras have to survive launch.

There are material issues because

even the glues used still have to be

sticky at these low temperatures.

Electronics performance is

important so the electrical parts

do not introduce noise or other

distortion to the images. Designers

have to do thermal modeling to

make sure they don’t overheat or

freeze the cameras.

And then there’s Triton itself. “We

have to have a very good idea of

what elements compose Triton to

ensure the spectrometer is sensitive

to the optical signature of those

elements,” said Warren.

The thing she most enjoys about her job, besides working with really

dedicated, bright people, is “that

the work is exacting. We are build-

ing complex systems and can’t really

see how all the parts interact until

we build it and try it out.”

The biggest surprise in her career

came at her first job at the naval

lab. “I was surprised that a country

needs such good education, ele-

mentary on up, and a really strong

industrial base to build instruments

at this level of excellence. This was

a revelation—the importance of so

many levels of excellence all along

the way for a country to reach this

higher plain. Before, I just took this

for granted.”

For those interested in science,

Warren said, “Stick with it! I wasn’t

a straight A student or the best in

my class, but by studying and work-

ing hard you can become an im-

portant contributor to the team.”

But planets are usually colder than

stars and so there should be little

or no infrared light.

Spitzer data showed basically no

infrared light at all. And the depths

of these transits are identical be-

tween the TESS data and our

Spitzer datasets. The conclusion

was that this is almost certainly a

planet,” said Crossfield.

WD 1856 b is located about 80

light years away in the northern

constellation Draco. The team

believes the gaseous planet was

pulled in by the white dwarf’s

gravity long after the star had

dwindled down from its red giant

phase — otherwise the planet would have been obliterated in its

current orbit.

STAR cont. from pg. 2

MANHATTAN — K-State Uni-

versity’s College of Education

Rural Education Center recently

received a $451,480 grant to sup-

port STEM education in rural and

underserved communities.

The USDA Distance Learning and

Telemedicine Grant will support

the center's Rural Enhancement of

STEM Education through Tele-

Presence, or RESET, program and

purchase strictly equipment like

robots, microphones and laptops

for the 20 schools in 10 Kansas

school districts involved in the

project.

Participating in the grant are An-

dale High School, Andale; Axtell

High School, Axtell; Cheylin High

More Help for STEM Education!

School, Bird City; Buhler High

School and Prairie Hills Middle

School, both in Buhler; Garden

Plain High School, Garden

Plain; Jackson Heights High

School, Holton; F.L. Schlagle

High School, J.C. Harmon High

School, Sumner Academy, Wash-

ington High School and Wyan-

dotte High School, all in Kansas

City.

Also involved are Blue Stem

High School, Leon; Ness City

High School, Ness City; Osage

City High School and Osage City

Middle School, Osage City;

Sabetha High School and Sabetha

Middle School, Sabetha; Troy

High School, Troy; and

Wetmore High, Wetmore.

Volume 18, Issue 1

Published through the Ad Astra Initiative of Space Age Publishing

Company 230 California Avenue

#108 Palo Alto, CA 94306

Editor/Publisher: Steve Durst news@spaceagepub.com

Managing Ed: Jeanette Steinert jeanettesteinert@att.net Webmaster: Ken Moum

Topeka Liaison: Jodi Spindler

We’re on the web! and

facebook

Board of Directors

President: Jeanette Steinert

Vice-President: Ken Moum

Treasurer: Vicki Johnson

Steve Durst

Caleb Gimar

Craig McLaughlin

Kay Neill

Nick Solomey

• Introduction to the In-

terstellar Community:

-100-Year Starship, Icarus Inter-

stellar, IRG/TVIW, i4iS, Tau Zero

Foundation, Centauri Dreams,

Ad Astra Kansas Foundation,

Breakthrough Starshot / Initia-

tives, et al …

• Curriculum Considera-

tions:

-Ad Astra Kansas News

Interstellar R&D 38 Features

2001-2020 on Interstellar Obser-

vation, Communication, Trans-

portation

-Founding Statement of Purpose

-First Course(s) – 2021, in

Topeka, Wichita, Hutchinson,

Lawrence, Manhattan, Emporia?

-Professors, Teachers, Instructors

-IU Home Campus Location

-Organization

-Funding First Year(s)

Relativistic Travel to Proxima B

Proxima b, in Alpha Centauri, is

attracting researchers interested

in finding out if it is as habitable as

it seems. Breakthrough Initiatives

is planning to send probes to

study it, so is Douglas Vakoch,

who leads the Messaging Extrater-

restrial Intelligence (METI), and

Gerald Jackson of Hbar Technolo-

gies. The METI initiative will look

for laser pulses emanating from

Proxima b, which, if detected,

would be a sign that there may be

life on this planet.

This “Interstellar R&D” thirty-eighth feature in the Ad Astra Kansas News continues a 19-

year enterprise to research and gather information on important developments preparatory

to humanity’s greatest adventure—voyaging to the stars. Now, at the millennium’s turn, is an

appropriate time for grand vision and forward thinking, and there are strong signs of a renais-

sance in interstellar travel thought and activity. This feature and newsletter, thus, now set

forth to develop a national / international /global clearing center and storehouse of knowledge

and know-how for travel to the stars: Ad Astra—Galactically, Steve Durst

Page 4 Fall 2020

INTERSTELLAR R & D Ad Astra Kansas News

Observation Communication

Transportation

The EHT is an expanding global

consortium of dozens of world-

class radio telescopes, observato-

ries and organizations involving

hundreds of astrophysicists that

uses VLBI technologies to create

an Earth-diameter sized capacity

for imaging black holes and their

accretion disks, testing general

relativity, understanding jet gene-

sis, and instrument collimation.

First image of a black hole at the

center of supergiant elliptical

galaxy Messier 87 was announced

and published April 10, 2019, by

the EHT Collaboration at six

simultaneous press conferences

worldwide. EHT continues to win

many awards for the M87 pro-ject, which provides powerful

confirmation of the Einstein gen-

eral relativity theory. EHT hopes

next to image high priority Sagit-

tarius A*, the supermassive black

hole at the center of the Milky

Way.

Pioneers leading EHT include

Shep Doeleman, Founding

Director; Geoff Bower, Project

Scientist; Jessica Dempsey, EAO /

JCMT; Huib van Langevelde,

Project Director; Heino Falcke,

Radboud University; Recent EHT

highlights note that Smithsonian

Astrophysical Observatory has

partnered with National Society

of Black Physicists to form the

SAO / NSBP EHT Scholars Pro-

gram.

Earth-Moon VLBI could result in

massive expansion of black hole

imaging capability appropriate for

relativistic considerations of the

Interstellar age.

Event Horizon Telescope EHT

Rural Educa-

A long-standing goal of the AAKF,

especially board member Steve

Durst, has been to promote space

science in Kansas. Durst suggests

“the potential establishment of

an Interstellar University (IU), a

collection of rich international in-

terstellar R&D resources, could be

a timely consideration for early

2020s decade to realize the long-

range vision to innovate, educate,

inspire and achieve Interstellar

observations, communications,

transportation in the 21st Centu-

ry.”

Kansas seems an appealing location

and the time right to launch a mod-

est beginning for this important

venture, planning for next the 5 years and decades beyond. Perhaps

first starting with an existing uni-

versity department and expanding

to a regular curriculum, the IU

would build on in-state resources.

IU may be similar to the Interna-

tional Space University, and see

participation from the Interstellar

community. A hybrid online organ-

izing meeting will occur on Oct.

24 , to gauge support for this

ambitious and far-reaching goal.

Agenda Considerations:

• Why an IU in Kansas?

-Geography: Mid-Way USA

- National Attributes, Character:

Heartland, Breadbasket;

-State Motto: Ad Astra Per Aspera,

“To the Stars Through Difficulties;”

- University Science & Research,

Industry Technology Capabilities

Interstellar University

First Planning Meeting,

Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, KS